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Straightforward advice for taking your sales team to the next level! If your sales team isn't producing the results expected, the pressure is on you to fix the situation fast. One option is to replace salespeople. A better option is for you to optimize your performance as a sales leader. In The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness, sales management consultant Kevin F. Davis offers 10 proven and distinctly practical strategies, skills, and tools for overcoming the most challenging obstacles sales managers face and moving your team ahead of the pack. This book will help you:

Learn the 6 sales rep instincts that can cripple your management effectiveness, and replace these instincts with a more powerful leadership mindset - true sales leadership begins with improving the leader within

Stop getting bogged down by distractions, become more proactive, and find more time to coach, lead, and inspire your salespeople

Get every salesperson on your team to be more accountable and driven to achieve breakthrough sales results

Master the 7 keys to hiring great salespeople

Create a more customer-driven sales team by blending the buyer's journey into your sales process

Speed up the improvement of your team by mastering the 7 keys to achieving better coaching outcomes

Excel at the most challenging coaching conversation you face - how to solve a sales performance problem that is caused by a rep's lousy attitude

Attain higher win-rates by intervening as a coach at the most critical stages of a buying cycle, quickly identify opportunities at risk, and coach more deals to the close

Discover why so many salespeople fail at sales forecasting and how to impress your company's upper management by submitting more accurate forecasts

And much more…

You can apply the strategies outlined in this book immediately to take control of your time and priorities as a sales manager, become more strategic, deliver high-performance coaching that grows revenues, and ultimately drive your team to greatness.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

''This really is an excellent piece of work. I like very much the way Kevin has created a one step at a time plan, guiding both novice and experienced sales managers alike, through a program of self-improvement. This should be a must read for all managers who have an ambition to develop into genuine leaders.'' --Linda Richardson, Founder of Richardson, Best Selling Author, Consultant, Faculty Wharton Graduate School

''This fast-moving, practical book shows you how to immediately boost the performance and productivity of every salesperson. It will make you look like a genius!'' --Brian Tracy, Author, The Psychology of Selling

''I'm always excited about books that help managers become true leaders—and The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness is one of those books.'' --Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The New One Minute Manager® and Collaboration Begins with You

''I've seen first-hand the positive impact Kevin Davis' approach can have on sales management teams. The Guide to Greatness provides a practical sales coaching system that can be immediately implemented by sales management at all levels to create greater success.'' --Roy Chestnutt, Executive Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer, Verizon Communications

''Everyone knows that the effectiveness of a sales manager is the biggest factor determining a team's success. In The Sales Manager's Guide To Greatness, Kevin Davis describes 10 practical strategies that sales managers can use to elevate their own game — and create a champion team.'' --Mark O'Leary, VP of Enterprise, Western Division, Comcast Business

''Adapting to the changing demands of buyers is forcing the evolution of the sales manager. In The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness, Kevin Davis shows us how to integrate traditional performance management with new strategies for developmental coaching. That's the best way to equip our teams to win.'' --Joe Galvin, Chief Strategy Officer, Vistage Worldwide

''The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness is a highly valuable book for sales managers and those who develop them. The book's formal integration of the buyer's perspective into the sales process is especially useful, and its strategies for developing a consistent and formal coaching process are top-notch. Both of these pillars have to be in place to improve sales performance consistently, according to our research at CSO Insights.'' --Tamara Schenk, Research Director, CSO Insights: Research Division of Miller Heiman Group

''The Guide to Greatness provides a powerful message for any leader whose success is determined by their team's sales performance. We've measured not only an improvement in our sales managers' skills but, more importantly, a positive impact on our sales force and bottom-line results.'' --Jim Ferguson, VP of Sales, Holland Transportation

''Frontline sales managers are the most important lever for leading change in a sales organization. Yet, most companies still don't adequately prepare them. In The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness, Kevin Davis provides proven-effective, practical, and actionable content to help you prepare and enable your sales managers to be the proactive, productive people leaders, managers, and sales coaches they need to be, to get the results you want from your sales force.'' --Mike Kunkle, Sr. Director of Sales Readiness Consulting, Brainshark

''We all accept - at least I hope we do - that the sales management function in every company is now pivotal to the overall success of the organization. The sales team is the offense and if they are not scoring consistently then the team has a very bleak future. However, in order to maintain optimum performance levels the team needs a strong leader and coach. Therein lies the challenge because we believe that 80% of managers lack that capability. The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness provides a superb route map, which is easy to follow and implement. This is not a book to be read just once and put on the bookshelf, rather it genuinely is a guide, which should be referred to daily until the skills are fully adopted.'' --Jonathan Farrington, CEO, Top Sales World and Executive Editor of Top Sales Magazine

''The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness debunks the myths surrounding what it takes to be a great sales manager once and for all and offers clear solutions and takeaways. This is more than a book—it's your map to success.'' --Mark Hunter, author of High-Profit Prospecting

''Guide to Greatness fills the much needed gap of developing sales management skills. This is a comprehensive, pragmatic guide for putting sales leaders and leadership into action with results.'' --Louis Carter, author of Best Practices in Talent Management and the Change Champion's Fieldguide

''If your sales force isn't producing the results you need them to, it isn't likely that it's because they are poor performers. It's more likely that they need to be better led. The coaching section in The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness alone will help you remedy this problem. And faster than you believe. Read it now, and implement it immediately.'' --Anthony Iannarino, author of The Only Sales Guide You'll Ever Need

About the Author

Having worked his way up from sales rep, to sales manager, to general manager, author Kevin F. Davis understands the particular challenges faced during the transition from sales to managing salespeople, and the transition from managing sales reps to managing managers.

As president of TopLine Leadership Inc., which he founded in 1989, Kevin offers customizable sales and sales management training programs that provide sales managers with the essential skills and knowledge they need to become great at what they do and help firms dramatically increase top line revenue growth. Over the last three decades, he has delivered sales and management/leadership training to tens of thousands of tenured salespeople and sales managers.

Kevin's most recent book is The Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness: 10 Essential Strategies for Leading Your Team to the Top. He has also authored two sales books: Slow Down, Sell Faster! and Getting into Your Customer's Head.

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This book lives up to its title in every way. You'll find detailed instructions on how to do your challenging job, as well as reasoned judgment on why Mr. Davis's recommendations are the way to go. Here are characteristics of the sales culture that you'll build when you follow this guide:• Formality• Thoroughness• Performance-based• Mentorship• Coaching• Preparation• DevelopmentalThese qualities, therefore, make the book conducive to a vigorous, thriving sales culture, especially the emphasis on the Sales Manager as Leader and Developmental Coach. Sales teams thrive in a collaborative, coaching culture, not a bureaucratic top-down culture. But few sales managers have much training or experience in how to behave as a coach. This book shows you how to fulfill that role and offers lots of anecdotes along the way.

Davis lays out a model in which every salesperson will have the optimal chance to be successful, but at the same time slackers will be discouraged and either find their own way out or be dismissed without much trouble. It sounds like a high performance, low drama operation in which it's easy to learn exactly what's expected of you, and support for your learning is plentiful.

The most original part of the book is “the buying focused sales model,” which the author fully explains and illustrates as a playbook integrated inside the CRM. It’s a way of understanding your sales process, naming the steps and stages and activities, completely in terms of the buyers’ perceptions rather than those of the seller. This section alone should be required reading for your entire company, not just the sales manager! Many sales gurus talk about being customer-focused, but I've never seen such a detailed, thoughtful approach to how you would go about teaching salespeople to implement a sales process completely based on the buyers' activities rather than your own. Brilliant!

Kevin Davis moved up through the ranks of sales person to sales leader, which is a tough transition. If you're the sales manager, you ought to have this book. If you aspire to sales management, get it now to make yourself ready. If you're the CEO or Sales VP of a big company, make sure all of your sales managers have this book and use it in their daily practice.

This is one of the best sales books I’ve read, ever. It’s one of the best leadership books I’ve read, ever. It's not grandiose and it's not driven by motivational jargon. Rather, it's a thorough, detailed guide, with step-by-step explanations of what you should do and how you should do it in order to lead a sales team “to the top” as the subtitle promises.

When we read a good chapter or paragraph in a great book from a great author or teacher, many of us highlight the section or write down the quote . . . well I DOG-EAR that page. For example, In Sales Manager's Guide to Greatness, there is a section call WAR #1 - Player vs Observer. And the line that rang true for me was the line, "the only way I could keep silent was to squeeze that coin." To shut up and OBSERVE is so critical to help your team be better at what they are supposed to do.

My problem now is, at last count, there are 27 pages dog-ear'd - how do I go back and find those gems that I need to remember?

Excellent brain matter for every sales leader - from the front of the pack with your field sales team, to all the way back to the sales leadership group developing, creating and implementing sales strategy and process.

Great job Kevin and thanks again for the best "HOW TO" on sales leadership I've read in a long time.

I had read several books of sales management but this book had been enlightening. Three major takeouts for me: first, change your selling process to a buying process: second, focus on improvement your base salesforce; last by no least aim to a stretch goal. If you are starting as a Sales manager or you want to improve as one, this is the guide you need to follow.

This is another great book from Kevin Davis, one of my favorite business authors.I have read Mr. Davis’ previous books and enjoyed them all, especially Slow Down and Sell Faster. But I have to say that this one is his best to date and I’ll tell you why. This is the one book that completely covers every facet of Sales Management. As Mr. Davis writes Sales managers spend less than 10% of their time coaching their sales team. Instead they are spending their days doing anything but coaching. Think about it you sales managers out there. I dare you to keep a log listing the things you do every day and I can guarantee that you are going to prove Mr. Davis right. From checking your email to playing manager with the rest of the management team to checking on your numbers you are spending little to no time helping your sales people become great sales people and that’s why you need this book.Here is just a list of what the author covers:- Becoming a leader- Take control of your time- Accountability/ how to make your sales people truly accountable- Developmental coaching- Motivating the demotivated- Who to coach: to you spend more time with the hero or the zero and why?- Why scripts are important and how to use them effectively- The ride along, how to do it and how to get the most out of it.- Sales focused on buying rather than selling. In other words, take the buyer through the buying process which will help him make the right decision rather than just trying to sell him.Are you getting this yet? Do you understand why this book is so important? Not yet? Well here is one more reason this is a great book and it’s called PCST or PC-Solution-T and it is a very effective method of hands on coaching. The steps of this process are:- Problem: define the problem- Cause: Why is it happening?- Solution to propose:Mr. Davis also advises on how to get the most from all of them logical. All common senseLook, I don’t know Kevin Davis at all. He is not the reason I am so high on this book. I’m high on this book because I have been in sales management for over 40 years. I have been in the business of managing and advising sales managers for 20 years and in all that time if I have never read any book that does such a good job of stressing the importance of spending time coaching sales people and then exemplifying in clear and understandable terms how to do it. That’s why I am hot on this book.